Ford will be airing a four-part documentary series called Built Ford Tough, in which the Ford Ranger showcases its abilities by making short work out of a number of grueling tasks. The preview for the online series, which is available for viewing on Ford Malaysia’s Facebook page, went up earlier today.

Set in Thailand, a film crew followed the Blue Oval engineers as they traveled across the country in search of the most hostile environments, testing four key elements that define the Ranger’s tough versatility, namely its load box, torque output, water-wading capability and engine cooling system.

The first episode, called Heavy Drop, sees the Ranger being subjected to a punishing day at the job site, with pallets of wood, concrete tubes, bags of cement and stacks of steel dropped from 2.6 meters above the truck bed to test the outer limits of the Ranger’s load box.

In Tough Towing, Ford put the truck toe-to-toe with industrial rock haulers at a working limestone quarry to demonstrate the Ranger’s towing capability. The test employed a wheel-less steel sled designed to showcase the vehicle’s impressive breakaway force.

Episode three, titled Deep Water, sees the Ranger undergoing extensive water wading tests at a 4×4 testing facility in the jungle of Kanchanaburi Province. A variety of different scenarios abound, from higher speeds at 200 mm all the way to 800 mm with a full payload in the bed.

Finally, 24H Endurance tests out the Ranger’s cooling systems over a 6.5 km jungle track through mountains on the northern Thai border, with high RPM stress and extended periods of extreme towing and payload demands being undertaken in a 24-hour endurance run.

Anthony Lim believes that nothing is better than a good smoke and a car with character, with good handling aspects being top of the prize heap. Having spent more than a decade and a half with an English tabloid daily never being able to grasp the meaning of brevity or being succinct, he wags his tail furiously at the idea of waffling - in greater detail - about cars and all their intrinsic peculiarities here.